the 2020 presidential race
will forever be remembered as the
pandemic election
more than 200 000 americans are dead
millions
unemployed and america's national debt
is more than 100
of gdp little surprise that president
trump's handling of the pandemic has
been the defining
issue of the election it's also been an
election
framed by the policies and the
personality
of a man who's wrecked political norms
and undermined institutions
but what's the real legacy of the past
four years
[Music]
the economist u.s team has been
following the twists and turns of
trump's presidency
he is their analysis
in 2019 donald trump presided over
america's lowest unemployment rate in 50
years
a buoyant stock market and vast annual
wage growth among the lowest paid
workers
the economy was booming just as he'd
promised
i have made billions of dollars in
business making deals
now i'm going to make our country rich
again
trump's tax cut bill was signed within a
year of taking office
cutting corporate tax from 35 to 21
and decreasing taxes for around 65
percent of working americans in 2018
but particularly for the rich if you
look at the tax cuts and what they
actually did
they were fairly regressive i think it's
certainly the case that
if you inject funds into the economy by
cutting taxes then that's going to give
the economy some juice
that had something to do with the
economy's health and in the run-up to
the pandemic
trump's tax-cut splurge helped america's
gdp grow faster than expected compared
with the rest of the rich world
it also meant it had a bigger budget
deficit going into the curved 19 crisis
when the pandemic hit congress
implemented the world's largest
fiscal package the senate did
unanimously approve
an historic 2 trillion relief bill
they'll sign
the single biggest economic relief
package at the moment while the economy
is really struggling
there's no sign of inflation um interest
rates are very very low
there are no signals really out there
saying that you need to stop borrowing
right now
america's grim experience of covert 19
triggered a deep recession
but it will still probably be the best
performing g7 economy in 2020
the future does not belong to globalists
the future belongs to patriots the
future belongs to sovereign and
independent nations
[Music]
president trump promised to put america
first an anti-globalist stance which he
wasted
no time in implementing pulling america
out of 10
international organizations or treaties
he promised to renegotiate all of
america's trade deals his tactics seemed
to be threatening
other countries with tariffs and and you
know essentially trying to
trying to squeeze concessions out of
them the fact is
nafta has been a disaster
for the united states a complete and
total
disaster his critics said that this is a
very very dangerous
strategy because the risk is you toxify
politics
uh in the other countries that you're
dealing with and so if you enter a
negotiation essentially promising to
bully the other side into
submission the risk is it just kind of
blows up in your face
yet clearly there were all these deals
he renegotiated a deal with mexico and
canada
and a deal with south korea and then
there's
china starting in 2018
america waged a trade war with china the
average tariff rate on goods travelling
between america and china has since more
than tripled
if trump came in promising to in some
ways reset
the relationship with china when it
comes to trade he has managed to do that
we can disagree about whether all of it
is in a good way but he's
he's reset it the two countries agreed
the first phase of a trade deal in
january 2020
which included an agreement from china
to lift some trade barriers
and to buy certain american products but
right now
it doesn't look like china will meet
those commitments
the other thing there are still tariffs
on hundreds of billions of dollars worth
of
chinese exports to america and looking
ahead
i think those will be quite difficult to
roll back
entirely the u.s china relationship
has been changed and in a way that is
not going to be very easy to
reverse um certainly not politically
we will build a great wall along the
southern border
and mexico will pay for the wall
[Music]
it's one of the pledges that launched
trump's campaign and helped win him the
white house
so how much impact has trump had on
immigration
and so mexico has not paid for the wall
and he has not built much new wall but
the wall in the southern border is real
and he has taken funds from the defense
department to pay for it he has also
changed the asylum system he has made it
much harder
for people fleeing persecution to claim
asylum at the southern border
i think last year for the first time
canada overtook the united states
as the country that settles the most
refugees
trump's administration slashed the
number of refugee admissions from 108
000 by the end of 2016 to 24
000 by the end of 2019
under trump the number of migrants in
detention centers has increased
the tone and intention of his policies
has been clear
and unwavering children and adults are
seen huddled together in the building
that's divided up into chain-link
fencing that looks like a cage
it was a statement that immigration was
something that was not desirable
and that has been the main focus of his
presidency many of the policies that
grabbed the headlines were enacted by
executive orders signed by the president
without needing to be passed through
congress
this is border security immigration
enforcement
and improvements very important we've
been talking about this right from the
beginning
which means in theory they could be
reversed by the same process
that may be true as a technical matter
but the extent to which he has
changed america's stance on immigration
the extent which
he has turned the republican party away
from the long-standing
bipartisan consensus that we are a
nation of immigrants and that's a source
of strength and pride
can't be so easily undone also the sheer
number of changes he's made
is going to be really hard for a biden
administration if indeed that's what we
have
to contend with because it's going to be
coming into office
and having to deal with a depressed
economy with a pandemic
with probably calls for government
reform there's just a limited amount of
political capital
so obama's talking about all of this
with the global warming and
that a lot of it's a hoax it's a hoax a
lot of it
trump announced america would withdraw
from the paris climate agreement
though other countries have sought to
move away from fossil fuels
trump set about reigniting america's oil
natural gas and coal industries
environmental protection agency and the
department of the interior have really
been firing on all cylinders in terms of
removing
regulations on on coal plants not only
but also you know methane
pipelines and um exploration of
wilderness the cumulative effect that
there's
you know some people have measured that
this would increase carbon dioxide
emissions by
three percent in a year over time uh
which is
substantial it's at a time when you know
you want america to be
going the opposite direction especially
because you want other countries to feel
obliged to also fall in that direction
in total trump has reversed 79
environmental rules
including the clean power plan which had
set limits on carbon emissions from
electricity plants
replacing it with a more lenient rule
many of the rollbacks are facing legal
challenges by states and environmental
groups
but these might fail the thing that's
that's tricky about this
if trump were to be elected and
litigation continues
and there's a chance that some of
trump's changes would become permanent
and perhaps more damaging than that the
supreme court could rule to limit the
epa's authority to regulate greenhouse
gas emissions
so the environmental protection agency
which serves
under the president would be limited
under all future presidents even a
democratic one from having really bold
environmental regulations
[Music]
you know what i got in we had
over a hundred federal judges that
weren't appointed
it was like a big beautiful president to
all of us
trump has appointed 217 federal judges
including 161 to district courts
53 to courts of appeal and three to the
supreme court
it is my honor to nominate amy
coney barrett in all
trump has appointed more than a quarter
of the judiciary
he's moved faster than any president in
their first term
for 40 years the appointment or
elevation of so many conservative judges
is already reshaping american law
many will sit for life so the impact not
least in limiting the scale and scope of
government legislation
could be felt for decades to come
probably
most pronouns are going to be at the
supreme court there's a sort of
long-standing worry that
roe vs wade which is the supreme court
case that gave women a constitutional
right to an abortion
will be limited um even further some
people think it might even be
repealed entirely there's another
challenge to the affordable care act
up before them on november 10th there's
also a lot of fear about
you know things happening along any of
these dimensions that could um
hamper a sort of subsequent democratic
administration which is likely to
try and use the machinery of the
administrative state to sort of
achieve its policy ambitions and the
idea is that a very sort of trump-heavy
supreme court
and trump heavy courts generally are
just going to limit that
quite a lot
[Music]
perhaps trump's most enduring legacy
will go far beyond
policy when you report fake news you are
the enemy of the people
four years of lies and bullying have
inflamed political discourse in america
partisanship and polarization have been
increasing for many
decades before trump came out of the
scene you can say that trump is sort of
a symptom
of that polarization but that he's also
accelerated it in some ways
obama was seen as hugely divisive trump
is seen as divisive the difference is
barack obama made conscious efforts to
reach out to people who disagree
with him donald trump has not done that
and so
even to the extent that every president
is divisive he has reveled in the
divisiveness
in a way that past presidents have not
like to punch him in the face i'll tell
you
so if you look at sort of measures of
how republicans feel about democrats and
democrats feel about republicans you
look at whether people talk about the
other party as evil or immoral
all these sorts of kind of extreme
measures they all go up during the
trump administration a recent survey
found that one in five americans
believed violence could be justified to
some extent if the other party wins the
impending election
but america isn't just fractured along
political lines
and you see that the republican parties
increasingly become
a party of white identity if you
identify as having
racially conservative views on
african-americans you're much more
likely to become a republican
now than ever before trump has just
accelerated the polarization along these
identity lines
and even if he loses it will still be
the case
if he wins obviously we have another
four years to assess his legacy
if he loses i i think that he exposed
and
invigorated a part of american culture
that
um some had ignored in the past and i
don't think that that's going away
i'm samia keynes the economist's trade
and globalization editor
you can follow our coverage of the 2020
election and what happens next
by clicking on the link opposite thanks
for watching
you